Telecommunication devices are frequently handed off from one base station to another and/or from one carrier to another. A terminal may roam through coverage areas of several cells and therefore may be handed off from one base station to another as the terminal travels through the associated cells or sectors, and the coverage area associated with a base station and/or a carrier may vary due to changing environmental conditions and changing network configurations. Where a terminal moves from one cell to another cell in a mobile communication network, a handover is offered to the device in order to allow smooth and seamless transition between the cells. Typically, a handover in a wireless communication network includes a soft handover and a hard handover.
In the case of a soft handover, where a terminal communicates using a plurality of channels in an area where at least two cells are overlapped and a channel quality of one cell decreases to are reference value, a connection of the channel between the terminal and the one cell may be disconnected. In the case of a hard handover, where a terminal moves among cells, a connection with a previous cell may be disconnected and a connection with a subsequent cell adjacent to the previous cell may be necessarily performed.
Where strength of a received pilot signal is lower than a reference value or where a request from a base station is received, a terminal collects information about cells adjacent to the terminal and reports the information to a base station. An operation of searching information about neighboring cells described above is referred to as a cell searching. In this instance, the information reported to the base station is used for a handover.
As described above, an operation where a terminal scans base stations adjacent to the terminal is necessarily required so that a handover is performed. However, where the handover is frequently requested, a wireless resource for the handover may be wasted.